I admire your column, King, for being more rich and exciting than actually watching the NBA. The NBA is an aggressively dull disappointment, playoffs included. The dreary, lifeless second quarter of Suns/Lakers "basketball" you describe is, for me, the NBA writ small. Half court offensive sets that feature 3 or 4 world class athletes essentially standing on the periphery of the half court (the NBA equivalent of the left turn in NASCAR), their "defenders" close by, all of us (players and spectators) united together watching yet another one/two on one or two (the thrilling NBA double team strategy) playing their 83rd game of the season......... zzzzzzzzzzz. I say (and do) cut out the whole thing. I'd love to see these guys play basketball. Too bad they don't. Oh, and decaf coffee for me--don't want to ruin my sleep.

This is an unfortunate time in history for anyone, John Haught included, to be making these arguments to intellectuals, as they are all easily countered. Indeed, the only reason for Haught to direct his criticisms at Dawkins, Dennett and Harris is because their arguments are substantially correct and having so much resonance. Haught's attempts to bury these figures under giants like Nietzsche and Sartre are badly misguided, embarrassing, really. On the other hand, if Haught is attempting to capture (i.e. sell his book to) those searching for an alternative to, or a new set of rationalizations for, institutionalized religions, I think he may be in luck. That potential readership is as huge as the religious failures that have created it.

But let's not minimize those failures. There is very fresh blood and abject hypocrisy on the hands of all the major religions, from the leadership to the followers who have sat idly by. It is quite difficult to make the case that these faiths are connected in any way to an omniscient, omnipotent deity that is the source of universal moral principles. I speak here of genocide, war, terrorism, sexual abuse, oppression of women, and racism, to name only a few. Where was and is the movement within the major religions to challenge any of this? There isn't any.

There is, however, a distancing movement, and it is within this contingent that Haught's arguments may find a receptive audience. If he can provide a way for the embarrassed faithful to say "not me," and persist in living an intellectually detached, consumerist, me and mine lifestyle, he'll move product. Surely the moral indifference of this way of living may be as condemnible as the violence it permits.

If theologians and religious leaders wish to be in the non-trivial fact-claim business, and lately they really do, they need to be subject to the best fact-claim procedures we have, and those are reason, evidence and science. The latter have been of no help to religious claims so they are rather obviously avoided. To wit, Steve Paulson's question to Haught: Did the resurrection of Jesus happen or didn't it? Mr. Haught thinks the resurrection is empirically unverifiable, a metaphor, yet the power of the facticity of this claim is presumably among the most persuasive reason to be a Christian. Let's see how well that idea sells.

Obama is using a version of Bill Clinton's strategy from the 90s, which was to steal certain centrist ideas (e.g. welfare reform) from the Republicans and try to pull in independents, conservative democrats, and the legions unable to identify with divisive messages from the extant Republican candidates. Obama overtly says he is courting these latter voters in order to have an effective legislative majority should he be elected to office, but I think he also knows the political center objects to Hilary because they see her as classically liberal, will call her universal health care proposals as "socialist," and(unfairly) see her as weak on defense. These charges, on top of the widely reported and perhaps inexplicable distaste for her personality, make a general election involving her riskier for the democrats than it should be. Sadly, Clinton's campaign's strategy of going aggressive has functioned to diminish the authenticity that won Obama so much support in Iowa. Look for the word "change" to also start meaning a replacement of the two-family dynasty we've had in the executive branch since 1989....

I share Leitch's view that being a contemporary sports fan requires one to disconnect, but I see the choice he offers sports fans as trading one kind of intellectual emptiness for another. I agree with him when he implicitly suggests that it is a mistake to pretend sports are not active contributors to important social and political problems or that sports are somehow ideologically meaningless. But this only means that watching sports is not a diversion--there are important things happening in sports. Instead, enjoying them, particularly in the way they are packaged by mainstream media like ESPN, encourages us to turn certain kinds of thinking OFF.

If, for example, you happen to care at all about gender issues, you simply cannot have gender inequalities in the forefront of your consciousness and still enjoy, say, a full day of college football or the 95-plus percent of Sportcenter that is devoted exclusively to men's sports. Indeed, few places drive home traditional messages about gender more vigorously than sports, but we don't see a televised game as an opportunity to consider critical questions about gender, and perhaps that is precisely why many would, as Leitch says, "rather not know." Like walking into a shopping mall and being continually reminded that your shopping experience is ridiculous and wasteful, and that your money could be doing some real good elsewhere, while the truth of the message is indisputable, thinking about it sure isn't much fun.